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Why Privacy Matters

thistooshallgrow.com

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Re: Why Privacy Matters

#31

Post by tremon »

Clo_S wrote: post #5
tremon wrote: post #2

... published on a site that accesses 7 different top-level domains. And that's even before allowing any javascript to run. Oh the ironing.

Yes, that's something I'd love to do differently. The problem is I don't have the technical skills to build that website myself. As I said in the cookie banner, I disabled all the trackers I could. Unfortunately, Squarespace doesn't let its customers disable all of them, which is extremely annoying.

I guess the cookie banner only shows up after enabling javascript; at least, I never noticed it (reader mode worked fine for rendering the text).

As for the content, I think it's a bit all over the place. You start with references to abuses of vast data stores, and then immediately jump into a technical exposé of personal protective measures, but the introduced concepts have no relation to each other, nor do they appear to protect against the abuses that you started out with.

What was/is your intended audience?

Re: Why Privacy Matters

#32

Post by Clo_S »

css wrote: post #29
Clo_S wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a lot of non-technical people around me who don't get the importance of privacy. Family who buys Alexa and use Facebook for everything. I wrote this in an attempt to explain how far privacy breaches can get, how the implications can be. Then, I tried defining some security terms that non-technical people might run into. Security helps protect their privacy, so I hope to help them make sense of what those terms…

Are you trying to equate buying an Alexa device or using Facebook to your anecdote? I do not really understand how the concepts are related.

No, that's not what I said. I'm trying to show what sharing sensitive information with companies and governments can lead to.

Re: Why Privacy Matters

#34

Post by addajones »

msc1 wrote: post #25
Clo_S wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's something I'd love to do differently. The problem is I don't have the technical skills to build that website myself. As I said in the cookie banner, I disabled all the trackers I could. Unfortunately, Squarespace doesn't let its customers disable all of them, which is extremely annoying.

I liked your article, why don't you check out Ghost? I can help you spin up a VPS and a Ghost blog if you like in an hour, pro bono of course. https://ghost.org/marketplace/

I would love info on this, I only see their plans. Thank you!

Re: Why Privacy Matters

#35

Post by leakr »

sanderjd wrote: post #22
leakr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's a great theorical piece of advice. But here's the thing. In 2020 if you don't wanna self-host your website and have a resilient and flexible website, you don't have other options than squarespace/wix and other platforms using cookies.

Sure you do. Those may be the easiest ones, but they are not the only options. There is probably a discoverability problem though. It's not great if the best way to learn about the other options is through HN comments...

Your "standard" user without any git or HTML/CSS/JS or command line knowledge hasn't a lot of options imho. Obviously, self-hosting with https://sitejs.org/ or something similar would be ideal but when you don't have a dev/IT background and you're looking for a way to host a blog there isn't a plethora of viable and easy-to-use solutions, especially if you don't want to use a service provided by Microsoft, Google, Facebook etc... I did the research a few months ago and maybe I missed some options though? If you have resources I'm interested!

Re: Why Privacy Matters

#36

Post by Clo_S »

msc1 wrote: post #25
Clo_S wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's something I'd love to do differently. The problem is I don't have the technical skills to build that website myself. As I said in the cookie banner, I disabled all the trackers I could. Unfortunately, Squarespace doesn't let its customers disable all of them, which is extremely annoying.

I liked your article, why don't you check out Ghost? I can help you spin up a VPS and a Ghost blog if you like in an hour, pro bono of course. https://ghost.org/marketplace/

Thank you! I've heard of Ghost but it seemed to be only for blogs, so I didn't think it'd fit. I'll check it again.

Re: Why Privacy Matters

#37

Post by wnd_pn »

I totally agree with you. Unfortunately as of today, people are not putting enough attention on who they give their sensitive information to. Data breaches are increasing in number, billion of accounts are hacked every day (I just discovered one of my side-accounts got hacked through https://haveibeenpwned.com/), nevertheless the majority of us is still not protecting its data properly (perhaps the problem relies on ignoring the problem itself?). And the situation is even more dramatic in the B2B market: I work in the cybersecurity industry and every day I see companies being hit by these attacks. That is why, I always advice the people I know to start using privacy-oriented tools that could actually prevent or help preventing something like this to happen. Like using a password manager (https://1password.com)to create strong password and store them, or a secure email system (https://protonmail.com), or "simply" by keeping your systems and softwares up-to-date or by backing up your data.

We, at Cubbit, are contributing to the mission of getting back our privacy by building a distributed and encrypted cloud storage service that puts users in control of their data (https://business.cubbit.io).

Re: Why Privacy Matters

#38

Post by jpttsn »

Clo_S wrote: post #15
atoav wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are writing about the importance of privacy, you might consider what you are doing about it yourself if you want to be taken seriously. It is 2020, setting up a website that doesn't send off the data of your trusting visitors to third parties should be totally standard. Yet not even people advocating for privacy can get this done. BTW. one benefit of not collecting and tracking is that you won't have to show t…

Oh I'm well aware and I wish I didn't have to show the banner. If you know an alternative with which I could build that website, that doesn't force me to use cookies on users, I'm all ears

HTML

Re: Why Privacy Matters

#39

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

tremon wrote: post #2

... published on a site that accesses 7 different top-level domains. And that's even before allowing any javascript to run. Oh the ironing.

If you control your own "DNS" this site does not access any of those different domains. I do this, for speed and reliability, not privacy. When I access this site, the only domain my client accesses is "thistooshallgrow.com", which is hosted on squarespace. That hosting company requires a UA in addition to Host and Connection headers otherwise no others are required. Most sites do not require a UA header. I like to control the headers I send, too. Not for privacy; I just like the control and minimalism. This site, like most any site, works just fine for me in a text-only browser. I read the same content as anyone using a "modern" browser, minus the ads, tracking or other nonsense. I see no irony. Except perhaps that you are using a browser that defaults to enabling those automatic accesses to different domains, a browser that is in fact supported by the web advertising industry. You need an extension to modify the program's behaviour to block ads, etc.

Re: Why Privacy Matters

#40

Post by leakr »

msc1 wrote: post #25
Clo_S wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's something I'd love to do differently. The problem is I don't have the technical skills to build that website myself. As I said in the cookie banner, I disabled all the trackers I could. Unfortunately, Squarespace doesn't let its customers disable all of them, which is extremely annoying.

I liked your article, why don't you check out Ghost? I can help you spin up a VPS and a Ghost blog if you like in an hour, pro bono of course. https://ghost.org/marketplace/

Ghost is pretty neat! It's self-hosted solution though, which means that you have to update your OS and the software (Ghost related or not) on it regularly if you don't want it to be vulnerable which isn't ideal if you're not technical and don't want to deal with this.
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